I understand why the next generation of aspiring professionals are disheartened. All they see is the stories of wealth, beautiful barns, six-figure horses, and winning. Success looks expensive…I once wished I had learned to ride correctly sooner. I wished I hadn’t spent so many years running around bareback on my horse, and I had fewer years foxhunting, and less time on New Mexico ranches chasing cows in my English saddle…But you know what, two years into my solo professional career, every single one of those things that made this hard in the beginning, is making me more successful in the end.

You have to understand, being a working student is not like being an assistant trainer, its not like being a client, and it’s not like being a friend. It’s a very particular combination of all of those. For me, Heidi was my mentor, my manager, my instructor, as well as my friend. I’m not going to romanticize it, however, there are parts of being a working student that are incredibly hard.

As I became a working student, I had people try to persuade me to take a different path. In other words, I had people who tried to tell me not work in this industry. Those people told me, with an all-knowing tone of voice and a sparkle of wisdom in their eye, that horses really are a lot of work, and that wouldn’t it be better to pay someone else to do the dirty work and enjoy your nice, clean, trained, horse on your days off?

I hope you never get to this point. You, you future generations of working students, interns, trainers-in-training, I hope you never reach the point that I did, but if you do, remember this. I was several years into my professional endeavor with horses when I was feeling drained and demoralized.

You will live or die by the routine you establish. Depending on your situation, that may be hyperbole or the God's-honest-truth. Working student positions vary widely in expectations and requirements. Some are full time 6-7 days a week, live on-site, 55 hour weeks, everything from cleaning the trainer’s boots and mucking 25 stalls, to sweeping the office, turning horses out, and if your extra lucky, some riding.

I have wanted to be a horse trainer since I was six, and I have proof. I have a journal entry dated from my six-year-old self in the large, misshapen letters and the illiterate spelling of childhood, stating that “When I grow up I want to be a horseback rider” and “The reason I want to be a horseback rider is because I like horses a lot.” And you know what, here I am all these years later, and both of those statement are still true. Over time, however, it got harder.

So you're ready to give this working student thing a try, huh? Well let me give you a list of things you will need as you set out on this journey. I have accumulated this list after many “I wish I figured this out years ago” moments.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that you have to love this. Not like you love hash browns, or spending time with friends, or making jewelry as a hobby. You have to love this like it is your third parent and your only child. You have to love this to the detriment of so many other things. You have to love this in a way that is masochistic.

There are plenty of blogs and articles about being a working student, and they span the whole spectrum. There are the wonderful “my life is perfect and I get to ride all these pretty ponies and learn from the best of the best”, then there are the “I am trapped in a living horse-hell as a slave and I hate my life and everyone else too”. The truth, at least for me, encompassed a little of both.

If I was to give you one piece of advice, tell you one thing, it would be this: you will work hard. You will be tired and dirty virtually every day. You will not get to do things your way, that is not what you are here for. You are here to embrace someone else’s way. You are going to learn, without even realizing it, you are going to learn.